[horizone]

I decided mid last year that I was going to redesign one of my projects to break away from 3rd party service reliance for the sake of protecting the end users privacy.

First thing to go was Google Analytics. Depending on your product and how you want to grow it, it’s possible that you don’t need the range of reporting that GA provides. I know I didn’t.

After that I looked at what other third party services and trackers that were being used. I’ve been opposed to advertising for 15 years, so I didn’t need to worry about them as they were never there. I work on other projects that are infested with them and I would love to remove them but marketing loves its metrics and ability to squeeze a dollar out where ever possible. External commenting services were removed (that was more laziness on my behalf) and social login methods.

Lastly (and this one was hardest to part with due to the benefits), CDNs. I decided that any external request would be a problem, as once the request leaves and gets redirected a few times you’ve provided who knows how many companies data on your end user. Every file would have to reside within the realms of the project.

In the end I’m happy to say that my project (which is still in development) is and will always be self contained, for the protection of the end user.

I do realise that there are other external factors that can track the user, but from my end I’m doing what ever I can to minimise those factors.